


you will not be troubled

by A_Starry_Night



Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: F/M, Slice of Life, post Book 8
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 06:53:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29346168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Starry_Night/pseuds/A_Starry_Night
Summary: I have only just discovered the Outlander series, both book and series, and I loved them-- to the point where I devoured all eight books in about a month and completely burned myself out of wanting to pick up another book again for at least a year. (Seriously, I'm exhausted from all the reading.) I am definitely eagerly waiting for book 9, though, and I can't wait to read more of the Fraser/MacKenzie family interactions when DG releases it.I tried to get Jamie's accent down without it being too awkward, so I hope it's convincing. If you see anything I could to make it less so, please let me know!
Relationships: Claire Beauchamp/Jamie Fraser
Comments: 4
Kudos: 45





	you will not be troubled

**Author's Note:**

> I have only just discovered the Outlander series, both book and series, and I loved them-- to the point where I devoured all eight books in about a month and completely burned myself out of wanting to pick up another book again for at least a year. (Seriously, I'm exhausted from all the reading.) I am definitely eagerly waiting for book 9, though, and I can't wait to read more of the Fraser/MacKenzie family interactions when DG releases it.
> 
> I tried to get Jamie's accent down without it being too awkward, so I hope it's convincing. If you see anything I could to make it less so, please let me know!

“What if you both had actually died?”

Whatever noise that was in the kitchen stilled with Brianna’s question; the crackling of the fireplace was suddenly overwhelming as I looked up from my book of herbs. 

“What d’ye mean?” Pausing in his own task of sewing a tear in his shirt, Jamie frowned at our daughter, clearly just as thrown as I was. 

Brianna’s hand waved idly in the air for a moment, her expression (so much like his) troubled. Clearly this was a thought she had been struggling with for a while. She was silent for another long moment to gather the words she would need—no mean feat, I realized, when she finally did respond. The new Big House around us was sturdy and welcoming, having just been finished a week ago. “The house burning down. The… date changed, see. It was meant to burn down on January 21st, 1776, right?”

Jamie’s gaze drifted to meet mine for just a moment before turning back to her, his response more question than statement. “Aye.”

She took another deep breath. “That’s what Roger and I thought.” Her own attention drifted to Roger then, who sat in the corner near the hearth, cuddling a slumbering Mandy in his lap. Jem was curled up sleeping on the bench beside him. “The date changed, you see… in the future. We noticed it when we lived at Lallybroch, and we found the old notice. The date very clearly changed to later in the month than it was when Roger and I first discovered it.”

A shiver trailed down my spine, as it often did when we discussed time travel. From the way Jamie’s expression suddenly smoothed out into expressionless, he was feeling much the same—and that he had most likely already guessed the meaning of Bree’s question. He tilted his head enough to look at Roger himself, who merely nodded in answer.

“I’m not sure, dear,” I finally said quietly, “what you’re trying to say. Are you afraid that this house will burn down, too—?”

Brianna shook her head, red hair glinting like flames in the dark. Not the best comparison, I thought ruefully to myself, but it couldn’t be helped. “No, I mean… what if I never came to the past to warn you both before?” Her voice wavered for just a moment then, looking up at us with troubled blue eyes. “What if that obituary was genuine, and you both had died in the house in 1776 because you weren’t warned of it happening?”

I felt my spine slam into the back of my chair, the breath knocked from my lungs as I thought again of the spread of flame in my old surgery, the smell of cooked meat from the bodies still in the ashes heady and all the more disturbing now with Brianna’s question. Jamie and I had barely made it out from the Big House alive, after all. I could all-too-well understand what had disturbed her so—Jamie and I shared it. “Bree, you know that that’s not a question we’ll ever be able to answer. We know so little about how time travel works, after all.”

“I know. I _know_ that, Mama, but it’s been driving me mad trying to figure out if I was always meant to go back to the past to warn you both, or if I had any agency at all in deciding for myself, and then changing the future that way, and I just…” She ran out of words, looking suddenly frustrated and close to tears; Brianna had always been an angry crier.

“Leannan—” Jamie stood from his own seat and went over to her, kneeling down to look up into her face. Gently he took hold of her hands and kissed her fingers. “Dinna fash yerself over what could ha’ been, or what it maybe was. Yer mother and I might ha’ died in the house fire, aye, or it could ha’ always been the way it’s turned out. What matters is that yer here—all of you are here. Ye came through the stones for the love ye bear yer mother, and it’s yer actions that have placed ye all here. The house burned, aye, but with both yer parents alive and well afterwards, and it’s all because ye had the courage to come after all.”

I truly envied Jamie’s easy way of speaking, and no more so than now seeing the burgeoning relief in our daughter’s face at his words. “It’s all so confusing at times, Da.” She wasn’t quite ready to give up on her argument, though, which made me smile and shake my head at the Fraser stubbornness—something that very nearly made me laugh aloud then seeing Roger doing the exact same thing as I was.

“I know, Bree. I frequently thought about what woulda happened if yer mother hadna come through the stones the first time, and it very nearly drove me mad as well before I realized that I pondered over what was impossible to understand.”

Startled, I blinked and looked at him carefully then, trying to figure out how I had missed such a crisis in him before. More than likely, I realized, he had pondered it during the intervening twenty years we had been separated. 

“So how did you stop wondering?” Brianna asked curiously. 

He grinned wryly. “I left it to God to understand for me. That’s how.”

I was still watching Roger at the moment Jamie said that, and I noticed how his expression twitched with something like surprise—and then softened into quiet understanding. Didn’t expect that response, did you? I couldn’t help the silent question, but sometimes it seemed that Roger forgot that Jamie’s faith in God was as strong as his own, Papist or no.

Brianna suffered from no such doubt, though, and she laid her free hand over Jamie’s and pressed them gently. “Well,” she said quietly, “then I suppose I’ll be thankful that someone knows, even if it’s not me.”

~/~/~/~/~

“Our daughter,” Jamie said in the darkness of our room a short time later, “is an utterly ridiculous, _brilliant_ lass, Sassanech.”

I laughed despite myself, taken aback. Shifting in the bed, I pressed myself more firmly along his own body and said, “I think there’s a bit of contradiction there, Jamie Fraser.”

“It isna contradiction if it’s the truth,” he replied with all the logic of a man. “Ye’ll recall it was Bree who pointed out the possibility of the ol’ cabin burning down instead of the Big House?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t really factor in the ridiculous angle you’re going for—”

“Aye, it does!” He was most certainly amused, his voice warm as he argued his point. His calloused fingers made the skin of my back tingle as he stroked my shoulder. “Her mind is always workin’ at all these brilliant angles, all the time, ye ken, and so she’s been thinkin’ over the impossibilities of time. Ridiculous, but brilliant.”

I laughed at the self-satisfaction in those words. “Well, at least I know where she got her ridiculousness from, then. You’ve had the same thought yourself, haven’t you?”

He was quiet then, our breathing the only sound for a long while. Tempted as I was to hear his thoughts on the matter, I knew better than to ask; he would tell me in his own time. “I did, aye,” he finally said softly, his attention now on the ceiling above our heads. “Wondering if it was possible if she saved our lives comin’ back here the way she did. Whether she saved us from the burning we barely missed at Crainsmuir.”

_I would have gone to the pyre with ye…_

I shivered despite myself as the memory of him saying that came back to me. “Does it trouble you anymore? The possibility that we could have died then?”

His long hair whispered against the pillow as he shook his head. “No. ‘Which of ye by takin’ thought can add one cubit to his stature’? We may well have died then, but we’re not now, and our lives are short enough to not waste it with possibilities o’ what could ha’ been.” His lips pressed a kiss gently on my forehead. “We are whole, we are alive, and He has given us our family back. For that I will gladly give the questions of Time over to Him and sleep without trouble.”


End file.
